Avoiding Quilty Disaster

I'm not normally a pre-washer. I'm usually a "Throw it in the wash with a couple Color Catchers and hope for the best" kind of gal. Most of the time that works just fine. I have had two big bleeding quilt issues, but of the couple hundred quilts I've made, I thought that was not bad. 

The thing is, when I cut out the red and white wedding quilt last year, I decided to pre-wash all the reds. I even pre-washed the red backing fabric. For all that preparing, it didn't do me a lick of good, because the quilt ran when I washed it (with color catchers!). So now we can make that three quilt bleeding disasters! Not all the white fabrics turned pink or red, but a couple of the fabrics turned really badly. I ran it through the wash a second time, with oxiclean and more color catchers. Still red, washed it a third time, still red. I didn't have the supplies I had used the other times I had a quilt bleed, so I started googling looking for a remedy to try where I had the supplies on hand to try. 

https://suzyquilts.com/fix-fabric-bleeds/

I had Dawn dish soap, so I decided to try this. I put the quilt in the bathtub around 5PM. I added the dish soap, hot water, and agitated as recommended. I checked the quilt before I went to bed, drained the water, rinsed the quilt, and then added fresh water and more dish soap. I let that sit overnight. The next morning all but two fabrics were back to white. The worst fabric was now pink and not red, so better. I decided it would have to do, and I put the quilt in the washer with extra rinse cycles to try to get the dish soap out of the quilt. I checked it after that, decided to try oxiclean again, and threw in a couple color catchers. The color catchers didn't really change color this time. After another wash, again with extra rinse cycles, I decided it was as good as it was likely to get, and tossed it in the dryer.

I think since I had used several red on white fabrics, the pink fabrics don't show up badly. If anyone asks me about it, I'll say I threw some pink in to add depth! Only I know what the troublesome fabrics originally looked like. I do find it kind of funny that none of the WOW fabrics turned color. The last quilt I had run had a bunch of Cream on Cream fabrics, and they took the excess dye badly. 

At any rate, I'm calling this wedding quilt done. I am currently quilting the third wedding quilt. 

I did finish the baby quilt for the upcoming grandniece.

I had some fun with the quilting.

Some continuous curves and a leafy motif.

Some ribbon candy.

And some spiral flowers. It was fun quilting some fun stuff on the baby quilt. I've only been meandering on the wedding quilts and it gets boring. I am fast it it though, and when I'm quilting a giant quilt fast is good. Smaller quilts I am more adventurous on. 

I can definitely see the light at the end of the quilt deadline tunnel!